Before leaving Gondar there was the obligatory mystery car problem to address. Stanley and Niels changed the back tire and tube in the hopes this would address the problem. It didn’t, but we moved on any way. We are making our way to the border with Sudan. Our route is prescribed as we can’t make it from Gondar in a day and apparently the border town itself (Metema) doesn’t have accommodation so we are driving today to Shihedi, where the Ethiopian Customs office is, and about 40km shy of the border. The drive from Gondar takes about 6 hours. They are working away on the road but there is still no tarmac and the unfinished road winds past small villages and through the hills. We are descending and it gets hotter and hotter as the day wears on. Mid-afternoon we arrive in Shehedi. We will just refer to it as ‘Shady” from here on out. The town has a dusty road, the customs office, lots of bars, lots of truckers a few restaurants. We find one ‘hotel’ which consists of a strip of dirty windowless rooms possibly under renovation (everything was heaped in the courtyard) but the guy insisted they were open for business. We decided to look a little further and found a place with fresh paint and a swept out courtyard just across from the customs office. We are shown two small rooms and we decide to stay. A guy staggers out of one of the rooms as we are unpacking the car and says he works for the customs office. He instructs us to meet him over there. We go across the road to customs and it turns out he didn’t mean immediately as there is still another hour until they open up from lunch (at 3pm). We continue to unpack and then go back over. He takes the Carnet, stamps it, gives it back and that is custom done. Shockingly easy. We are passing the hot afternoon playing cards in the courtyard of our little hotel. There were two places to sit, either in the smell of the pit latrines (right in front of the rooms) or in a fresher dust-and-diesel wind from the road. As we shift around the courtyard trying to get the optimal spot and the afternoon wears on it is becoming clear that this is a brothel. Not a hotel with brothel tendencies but a full on, nothing but, brothel. But still, it is clean and we seemed to have seen the only other place in town so we decide to stay on. Stanley and Niels had investigated the eating options in town for lunch and decided we were better off cooking ourselves for dinner. We fired up the bbq in the courtyard and made some spaghetti, chicken and pesto while the ladies prepared for the evening and the clientele started to come around. It wasn’t the most peaceful of sleeps with the Ethiopian mood music thumping through the mud walls but we managed to get some rest in the end.
